They may be listening to anti-Israel influencers, but they are mostly unpersuaded
Young conservatives and Trump voters have a largely positive view of Israel and strongly approve of the way President Donald Trump is handling the U.S.-Israel relationship, a Washington Free Beacon poll found. That’s true even for those who tune in to or get their news from anti-Israel podcasters like Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, and Candace Owens.
The poll, conducted in late August, surveyed over 1,000 young conservatives between the ages of 18 and 34. These young people support Trump’s handling of America’s relationship with the Jewish state by a whopping 43-point margin and a majority believe that the United States should support Israel as an ally. The president has been overwhelmingly supportive of Israel in its war against Hamas and continued to demand the release of Israeli hostages held by the terrorist group.
The polling comes at a time when anti-Israel influencers on the far right like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes are drawing eyeballs and the notion that young conservatives are increasingly hostile to the Jewish state is gaining traction. A New York Times profile of Fuentes, for example, noted that “his anti-Israel, anti-immigrant, anti-transgender and anti-civil-rights views seem to have gained new currency during the second Trump administration.”
While young people may be tuning in to these edgy right-wing influencers, they aren’t necessarily being persuaded. Among media personalities like Carlson and Owens, who routinely lambaste Israel and its supporters in the United States, a majority of their audience nonetheless has a favorable view of the Jewish state—58 percent of Owens’s listeners and 54 percent of Carlson’s. Even those who tune into Fuentes, who has described Israel as “the anti-Christ” and accused the Jewish state of staging the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, support Israel by a one-point margin, 38 to 37 percent.
Of the 20 percent of young people who said they had heard the theory that Israel was responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, for example, 49 percent dismissed it as definitely or probably untrue, while just 20 percent said it was definitely or probably true. That’s a theory that Owens has advanced on her podcast and Carlson has intimated, interviewing several guests who have suggested this is what transpired.
Similarly, of the 29 percent who said they were familiar with the claim that Israel persecutes Christians, 40 percent dismissed the notion while just 27 percent were receptive to it. Carlson spent 90 minutes last month interviewing the mustachioed sister of George Stephanopoulos, Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos, to discuss the matter. “The whole issue is that Israel has continued to grow and think that they can dominate the Christian areas, the areas of Palestine, so they make it very difficult for anyone else to be able to live there,” she told Carlson.
Positive views of Israel persist in the face of an overwhelmingly hostile media environment. Much of the news young Trump voters encounter about Israel—45 percent—is negative, while just 21 percent is positive. That news is coming from a variety of sources, from television to social media and YouTube.
When it comes to the popularity of various right-wing voices, Zionism does not appear to be a major differentiator. Pro-Israel voices like Ben Shapiro and the late Charlie Kirk and anti-Israel voices like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are all broadly popular among young people on the right.
It is clear, meanwhile, that voices with seemingly large social media presences, like Ian Carroll, Jake Shields, and Darryl Cooper, remain largely unknown. Just 4 percent of respondents said they got news about Israel from Carroll, who has been a guest on Rogan’s podcast and who said Thursday that Israel was behind the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
The poll was conducted between August 26-31 and has a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points. The crosstabs can be found here.
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